I have tried to improve the background and rise to the occasion of telling the up lifting story, presented to me above my sink, of an old stem supporting a new one. I tried to make it a little less fay, too.

Thank you for your comments. The waffles started bothering me too. Among other things I have tried to integrate them better by running the image through the "glass" filter, set on "blocks", so that the flower has a grid now too.